Friday, August 3, 2007

The Nolensville Road restaurant scene continues to expand into a true avenue of the world, adding Thai to the many ethnic choices available. Thai Taste is on Haywood Lane, perched on a hill just off Nolensville Road. It’s not much from the outside. As for the interior, the owners have managed to turn a cinder block bunker into a fairly stylish restaurant.

They have a wide reaching menu of Thai favorites and specialties that focus on seafood. You can have many orders in mild, medium or hot. This is always a tough choice until you know the chef’s spice scale. We’ve had Thai that blows up in your mouth on the medium scale, and supposedly hot food where you can barely taste the heat. The Meat Eater tends towards safe rather than sorry, so we ordered medium. It had a little bit of heat, but we ended up wishing we had ordered hot.

Several entrees come with little house salads. At first this seemed to be a disappointing and boring lettuce and tomato toss. However, the honey based dressing featured the great Thai use of sweet and tangy, turning the salad into a nice surprise.

The Tomka Kai is a well balanced coconut milk based soup, featuring thick pieces of lemon grass for flavor and chunks of chicken. Thai soups are usually so delicate and tasty that they can be the highlight of a dinner. This soup was no exception, and had just a little bit of chili pepper for kick.

The Veggie Eater immediately eyed the Pophia Sod spring rolls, rolled up in light rice paper and filled with egg, tofu, rice noodles and a tamarind sauce for dipping. They were good, perhaps not great, but a solid offering.

Pad Thai is always on our order at a Thai restaurant. We’re happy to report this one is a wet, saucy and flavorful mix of rice noodles and all the favorites: egg, bean sprouts and peanuts. There’s plenty of peanuty flavor and that’s important in a Pad Thai. Plenty of sauce is also critical for us and this proved to be a winner.

We also ordered up Kao Pad fried rice with shrimp. It had a decent flavor and a subtle heat. The shrimp was straight out of the cooker, and didn’t have much taste, so overall the dish was okay.

People have been raving about the curries and we’ll need to sample them next time around. They have a decent list of the usual suspects, including Panaeng and Khaeng Phed. The house specialties feature a number of Red Snapper, Tilapia and duck dishes.

Veggie Eater: I can’t say that my socks were knocked off, but it was a satisfying meal. I really enjoyed the spring rolls; they were wrapped in rice paper, full of veggies, noodles, and tofu. Eric was under whelmed with the spring rolls, but he generally prefers his apps hot and fried. We had the pad Thai with tofu, medium. It wasn’t very spicy, but there are lots of condiments available to zip it up. On a positive note, it is very veggie friendly. Virtually all dishes allow for tofu to be substituted for meat. I’ve yet to find my dream Thai spot in Nashville, but in the mean time, if I’m in this neck of the woods around lunch time, would certainly stop back in.

Meat Eater: This is a good option for Thai on the Southside. Service was quite good and the food was above average. It isn’t the cheapest Thai experience around, but I wouldn’t call it expensive either. We ran up a $35 tab with tax and tip for a big lunch.

5
comments:

You two are totally adventurous and finding a lot of true hole in the walls! I have never heard of this place. I am impressed that you are trying these little places. I am holding out for that great white whale of a really excellent Asian (pick any country) restaurant in this town.

My husband and I are from Los Angeles and we had been searching for a true and authentic Thai restaurant. We tried Royal Thai (too chinese for us; not even close to Thai) and we tried Basil in Cool Springs (Big hat, no cattle). We've tried all of the Thai restaurants all over town. We ended up using a coupon one night at a small hole in the wall in Franklin called Thai Spice. This is absolutely the best Thai food in Nashville. The cook (Thong) has received numerous accolades from locals and critics alike. His curries are to die for. They have some nice vegetarian options and the atmosphere is quaint. Don't forget to try the homemade ice creams (mango, coconut, basil and ginger....our favorite).

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Join us on this quest for the best ethnic, neighborhood and specialty restaurants in Nashville and Tennessee. We look for unassuming mom and pop joints where the food and the people are the main attractions. We give you two perspectives: Eric is the Meat Eater and Katie is the Veggie Eater, a Pesco-lacto-ovo vegetarian (which means she eats eggs, cheese and occasionally fish, but never meat). We base reviews on two anonymous visits and always pay our own way. We keep old reviews up so that readers can scout out restaurants. However, we stress that a review is a moment in time and the restaurant could have become better or worse or even changed management since we last reviewed. If you see a review that you think is off the mark, or no longer valid, please let us know and we will consider a revisit for an update.